Please let it be true!  It would be incredible.

I wish. but, not plausible.

Why isn't it plausible?

I think this is a great breakthrough. HIV has always been the difficult virus to treat because of it's fickle envelope proteins but these rare cases will give us insight on inventing new ways to treat it in the future. I think the interesting thing is that the child was treated with only antiretrovirals while Timothy brown was treated in a totally different way.

I honestly don't think antivirals will be the future for treatments though. It's more likely that some sort of gene therapy, something that might have the same effect as Timothy brown's scenario, will get rid of similarly persistent viruses.

The way HIV is resistant to our typical human immune system is because it disguises itself as one of our own body cells.  The leukemia patient who is cured of HIV is probably due to the fact his white blood cells were killing every cells, including those HIV disguised as normal cells.  And HIV was got rid off before it became uncontrollable.  It's a side effect of a terrible terrible disease, really (perhaps less terrible than HIV/AIDS, in which the patient really lose any shred of dignity).  But would like to know about what's the procedure in the infant case.  Hope it's replicable.

I also think the real cure for HIV does not lie in antibiotic type of treatment but genetic treatment.  I think some sort of nanotechnology that is able to track which cell is infected (out of millions of cells in our body) would be helpful also.

The way HIV is resistant to our typical human immune system is because it disguises itself as one of our own body cells.  The leukemia patient who is cured of HIV is probably due to the fact his white blood cells were killing every cells, including those HIV disguised as normal cells.  And HIV was got rid off before it became uncontrollable.  It's a side effect of a terrible terrible disease, really (perhaps less terrible than HIV/AIDS, in which the patient really lose any shred of dignity).  But would like to know about what's the procedure in the infant case.  Hope it's replicable.

 

I also think the real cure for HIV does not lie in antibiotic type of treatment but genetic treatment.  I think some sort of nanotechnology that is able to track which cell is infected (out of millions of cells in our body) would be helpful also.

I don't think HIV disguises itself as one of our own cells? Unless you mean that when they hijack T-cell machinery and turn them into their virion producing factories, then yes, they pretty much use that as its hideout. Or that they remain latent within other lymphocytes so that they are indetectable until triggered.

But I agree, that's one of the reasons (but not the main one) why similar latent type viruses are hard to get of completely. You have infected cells that act normal, but still harbour virion particles.

The fact that HIV has such mutable protein components though is one of the major factors why vaccines and antibody treatments are probably never going to be successful -- retroviruses just mutant too quickly within a person.

Add onto the fact that HIV targets the most important white blood cell type in our body, it makes your entire immune system appropriately self destructive. You have the commanding officers of your entire immune system telling all its soldiers to kill them and each other.

I wish nanotechnology will be available soon, it sounds terribly cool :0 But gene therapy will most likely be available first.